Thursday, September 29, 2011

Conflicting Evidence: What Is It?

What is “evidence”? What does it mean when it is “conflicting”? Succinctly put:

A document contains “evidence” only in terms of your research question. If your question is, “Was Charles the father of Barbara?” then Barbara’s birth certificate will contain direct evidence by naming her father. On the other hand, Barbara’s APG membership card will have little evidentiary value in answering that question.

Evidence is “direct” if it provides an answer to the research question. Everyone’s favorite example of this is a household group in the 1880 federal census in which relationship to the head of household is stated.

Evidence is “indirect” if it can be used to support an answer in a subtle way. Everyone’s favorite example of indirect evidence is a household group in the 1850 federal census. For example, if Barbara was a one-year-old youngster living in the household of Charles in 1850, we could conclude that the household structure does not preclude Barbara as a child of Charles. If they were related, this is just what we would expect to find. However, the census makes no direct statement about relationship and such a household structure could come about in other ways. We have to live with ambiguity in the 1850 census as it does not provide a direct "yes or no" answer to the research question.

Evidence is “conflicting” when two documents provide completely different answers to the research question.

I once had an audience member tell me that she had a situation in which the death date on the gravestone and the death date in the vital records were different. She asked me which one she should ignore. I wasn’t horrified by the question. In fact, it was familiar. In my early days as a genealogist, this was how I approached conflicting evidence. I wanted to know which date was right and which date was wrong.

After a few decades of experience, I now understand that it is a bad idea to bury conflicting evidence. If I write about an event as if that conflicting evidence doesn’t exist, then future researchers will be confused. They will find that evidence just as I did and they will doubt the depth of my research or the credibility of my conclusions as a result. Even worse, I might be wrong in my conclusion about which piece of evidence to keep. Therefore, we keep all the evidence we find. I like to make comments in footnotes about conflicting evidence and why I didn’t use it. That lets readers know my thought process and helps in the long run for all of us to come to reliable conclusions.

Excellent post! Now if only we could convince folks that "reasonably exhaustive" doesn't mean that you've found direct evidence(regardless of its reliability)that supports your theory, got tired of looking, and called it a day :)

About Me

Barbara is a Board-certified professional genealogist who specializes in the families of colonial Connecticut and Massachusetts. Her past board positions include the Connecticut Society of Genealogists, the Connecticut Professional Genealogists Council, the Greater Boston (now New England) Chapter of APG, the Association of Professional Genealogists, the Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG), the BCG Education Fund (an independent Massachusetts charitable trust), and as President of the Massachusetts Genealogical Council (MGC).

Currently Barbara serves as the BCG Representative to the Records Preservation and Access Committee (RPAC) and contributes to BCG's SpringBoard blog. Barbara is also MGC's Civil Records Co-Director for Federal Issues, the statewide Massachusetts Liaison to RPAC, and a contributor MGC's Sentinel blog.

Barbara's blog, "The Demanding Genealogist," explores issues of quality in genealogical work. She uses generally accepted genealogical standards to review printed and web-based genealogy work products, including her own work.

Among Barbara's publications are Philo Hodge (1756-1842) of Roxbury, Connecticut, and Descendants of Governor Thomas Welles of Connecticut through Hezekiah[5] and Daniel[5] Wells of Stratford, Connecticut. Barbara also edited The Descendants of Thomas Lamkin of the Northern Neck of Virginia. She has many published articles in The American Genealogist (TAG) as well as a few articles in such journals and magazines as NGS Newsmagazine, Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly (APGQ),The Connecticut Nutmegger, Connecticut Ancestry, and The Essex Genealogist. Her book reviews have appeared in the New England Historical and Genealogical Register, TAG, the National Genealogy Society Quarterly, and APGQ.

Most of all, though, Barbara loves to teach. She lectures at local, regional, and national conferences. She has mentored groups in the ProGen and GenProof Studies Programs. Her position as a substitute teacher in Boston University's genealogical certificate program -- accredited for three graduate-level credits in History -- she teaches topics as diverse as technology, methodology, analysis, writing, and professional conduct.